The real-time, circuit-level energy monitoring provided by Pecan Street Inc. is so responsive that you can open your refrigerator door, wait for the compressor to kick in and see the spike in electricity use.

Founded in Austin in 2009, Pecan Street seeks to understand energy use in much more sophisticated ways to drive innovation in the sector.

Now Boulder is partnering with Pecan Street on a pilot program the city is calling the Community Power Partnership to track energy use in 50 homes in two neighborhoods and 25 businesses, as well as at Boulder High School. The city starts recruitment efforts Monday for the program, which will be voluntary and confidential, with homeowners and businesses having access to their own data but Pecan Street having access only to anonymized data and the city running its queries through Pecan Street.

Officials hope to have monitors on a diverse sample of homes in two neighborhoods by the end of March. The initial program will run for two years, but the monitors could stay on the homes for longer if residents and the city find the information useful.

What Boulder officials learn from the energy monitoring could shape the programs and services offered by a future city-run electric utility, said Kara Mertz, Boulder's local environmental action manager.

"This is really where the rubber meets the road," Mertz said. "What kind of services do people want? Unless we start now trying to figure out what people want, on day one of the utility, we won't know."

Mertz points to a finding from Pecan Street's research in Austin — that while south-facing solar panels generate more total electricity, west-facing solar panels do far more to cut peak use in the late afternoon and early evening — as an example of the kind of information Boulder could use to shape the offerings of the future utility.

Colin Rowan, a spokesman for Pecan Street, is quick to caution that what's true in Austin might not be true in Boulder, with a different climate and different energy use patterns. He also said that 50 homes won't be enough to make "grand statements" about the community.

However, utilities can use that kind of information to shape incentives to meet the needs of the utility and the customer.

Goal is to speed innovation in energy

Another focus of Pecan Street's Austin research has been the impact of electric vehicle charging on the grid. Pecan Street's first focus area in Austin was the Mueller community, a mixed-use redevelopment of a former airport site not unlike Denver's Stapleton neighborhood. The neighborhood is full of educated, tech-savvy, environmentally conscious residents. Pecan Street has identified 50 electric vehicle owners in less than a square mile. Researchers can't be sure, but they believe it's one of the greatest concentrations of electric vehicles in the world.

Rowan said Pecan Street's monitoring found that the grid can support that level of electric vehicle charging, but they represent a substantial draw on the system. Pecan Street tested different incentives to find the price point that convinced most electric vehicle owners to do their charging overnight, when demand is lowest.

"Our goal here is to speed up innovation in energy, and the way we think that needs to happen is by involving the customer in decision making," Rowan said. "We're inviting them into a large energy focus group to find out what they like and what they don't like and what they want."

In addition to looking at energy use, Pecan Street collects demographic and facility data — how many people live in the home, what kind of energy efficiency modifications have been made, whether the home has solar panels or an electric vehicle, whether someone works at home during the day.

Corky Hilliard was among the first 50 people to move into Mueller, and she was an early participant in the Pecan Street project, which now has 250 participating homes in Mueller and a total of 1,000 homes in Texas and California.

An organizational consultant, Hilliard said she's interested in what drives human behavior, and she also cares about the environment and is fascinated by new technology. That meant the Pecan Street project "pushed all my buttons," she said.

"I like being part of research," she said. "I like being part of something that is beneficial."

Hilliard has between 10 and 12 boxes in her house monitoring her energy use. There's one on every major appliance, down to her coffeemaker. But she said the boxes are essentially "invisible" to her now, and she never feels like they're taking up too much space or that she doesn't have enough outlets.

Hilliard said she was constantly logging in to check her energy use the first six months of the program, but she doesn't think she's checked in over a year. The behavior changes, though, remain.

When she was part of a tiered pricing pilot program, she switched most of her major electrical use to after 10 p.m., including charging her electric vehicle and running her dishwasher. The only thing she didn't move was washing clothes because her washer doesn't have a timer.

Now she's back on flat pricing, but she reflexively waits until later at night.

"It made me more attentive to the fact that late-night charging is beneficial," she said.

Boulder program targets diverse energy consumers

Pecan Street is expanding its research both within Austin, with the installation of energy monitors in a low-income apartment complex, and to other cities, like Corpus Christi and San Diego. In Colorado, Pecan Street is also working with the city of Fort Collins.

In Boulder, officials have decided to focus on two neighborhoods: Newlands, west of Broadway between Alpine and Iris avenues, and the King's Ridge and Noble Park area, north of Valmont Road, between Foothills Parkway and Airport Road.

Mertz said city officials wanted one more organized neighborhood — Newlands — and one less organized neighborhood, and they sought a diversity of housing types and households. Newlands includes a Boulder Housing Partners complex for low-income residents. Noble Park includes a fairly large mobile home park.

"We're trying to recruit a diversity of users so people can see: How does my usage compare to someone whose household is like mine, not just someone who lives in my neighborhood," Mertz said.

The recruitment effort starts Monday with a mailer to all households in the target neighborhoods. The city also will identify "ambassadors" to talk to their neighbors about the program. Based on the response to the initial recruitment effort, the city will do additional outreach until it has enough households of enough different types.

The city also wants to recruit 25 businesses of varying sizes from downtown and around the Ideal Market area.

The monitors, which will be placed on the circuit box, are made by a Boulder-based company, eGauge. Pecan Street will pay for the residential monitors from a Department of Energy grant, while the city will pay for the commercial monitors with $25,000 in Climate Action Plan money.

The city also plans to install monitors on the water meters of participating homes. The city's water utility will pay for those meters, though the cost hasn't been determined yet because the monitors are out to bid, Mertz said.

Unlike SmartGridCity, which provided whole-house data every 15 minutes, participants in the Pecan Street program will be able to see information from individual appliances and circuits through a web portal or a mobile app.

Mertz said the city is working on a way to provide the appropriate technology to low-income participants who don't have a home computer or a smart phone.

The data will be encrypted before leaving individual homes and businesses, Rowan said.

City won't have access to individual customer data

Mertz said one thing the city wants to know is whether people will change their behaviors and energy and water use habits in response to the data. The city hopes to meet every three months with participants to find out how they're using the data and how useful they find it.

City officials also want to learn about the actual — rather than the presumed — energy savings from its Climate Smart programs, Mertz said.

As the city has planned for a future energy utility, Boulder officials have had a hard time getting detailed information about Boulder's energy use from Xcel Energy.

Because the Pecan Street monitoring occurs on the customers' side of the meter, the city can learn more about Boulder-specific energy use without securing Xcel's cooperation, Mertz said.

However, Mertz stressed that the city won't have access to individual customer data.

Depending on how useful customers find the monitoring, monitors could be offered to more homes in the future or the city could use the data to design programs without expanding the actual monitoring, Mertz said.

"We want to find out what's useful and what isn't before we end up investing $50 million or whatever Xcel invested (it was roughly $44 million) in SmartGridCity," Mertz said. "If it doesn't help people, then it's not a good investment."